Climate change, labour availability and the future of gender inequality in South Africa

Women in developing countries are more exposed to the adverse effects of climate change. We a structural model to study the long-term impacts of climate and socioeconomic changes labour supply and the pay gap between male/female and high-skilled/low-skilled labour. We our model with empirical evidence on the impacts of increasing temperatures on labour in two general economic sectors with high and low exposure to rising temperatures. five waves of nationally representative micro-survey data in South Africa from 2008 to 2017, find that while high-skilled labour availability is insensitive to climate change, higher have a negative impact on working hours of low-skilled labour specially among in the high-exposure sector. We incorporate these findings in an overlapping generations(OLG) model to show that climate-induced reduction in labour availability increases the relative of low-skilled female labour and reduces the wage gap between male and female labour in high-exposure sector, and between high-skilled and low-skilled female labour, in general. climate change damages both on sectoral productivity and on labour availability, we that by the end of the century, the output per adult will drop by about 11 percentage under a severe climate scenario. This calls for more targeted adaptation policies that build on potential benefits of climate change in reducing gender inequality and empowering women to up more active roles in designing and implementing such policies at the local level.